Opinion: On Wall Street, a week of epic fails

MarekFuchs

Return to sender: No one wants Amazon’s Fire smartphone, even as the company keeps cutting its price and offering incentives.

A sheaf of economic statistics came out over the course of our shortened week and, depending on which you seized upon, the economy looked like either a rising Phoenix or a wounded duck.

We had the gross domestic product revision: total Phoenix material. And then there was consumer confidence: Time for the dog to wade into the brush to fetch the quarry. On Wall Street, a guiding principle has always been that ambivalence is for wimps, but with such contradictory indicators, can anyone with a working brain honestly believe things are either good or bad?

That is because it is, of course, the week of door-buster sales, during which Americans trounce one another, from Wal-Mart
WMT, -0.37%
to Macy’s
M, -1.46%
for first dibs on that electric bug vacuum we’ve all been pining for. Oh, and also it’s Thanksgiving. Amazon obviously doesn’t have a front door, only a back door from which potential profits apparently flee, but Thanksgiving week is still a big deal.

In fact, Amazon took the occasion to cut the price of the Fire, which was once going to compete with Apple’s
AAPL, +1.63%
iPhone, but instead sits in warehouses in vast heaps of misery.

How low did Amazon cut the price this time? Numbers that low have not been invented, but Jeff Bezos assured Wall Street that he would invent good ones, though he added that traders won’t profit off the newly invented digits for 9,000 years or until the farthest reaches of time, whichever comes first. Traders dutifully nodded their heads and promised to wait.

Meanwhile, Apple hit a market capitalization of $700 billion, which translates into the down payment General Motors
GM, +3.40%
will presumably have to make on its first installment to settle a suit, which will invariably be filed in a case of a young woman, who was forced to plead guilty to killing her boyfriend even though, GM, those little charmers, knew for a decade that a faulty ignition switch was at fault. They kept the information from the woman’s lawyers and prosecutors.

Forget “People in Motion.” At this point, GM should just change its advertising tag to “People in Morgues.”

While GM might have to take up a collection to cover lawsuits, consumers are enjoying low oil prices, which hit four-year lows this week. Extrapolating out, Wall Street analysts, who never lack for a lack of imagination, predicted still lower prices.

In Manhattan, though, where you can swing a fist at random and never hit anyone who is concerned with pump prices, there is a gathering glut of enthusiasm over, well, everything. Seriously, Manhattanites are shopping without even coming up for air.

Hudson’s Bay Co., for example, which bought Saks for only $2.7 billion last year, mortgaged the company’s flagship 5th Avenue store for $3.9 billion, more than the average resident of 5th Avenue makes in two entire years. (For arrivistes in other Manhattan neighborhoods, earning $3.9 billion can take upwards of three years.) Seriously, somewhere Eddie Lampert, who made his bet on Sears
SHLD, -6.50%
and middle-class America, is sobbing into a glass of Kenmore-filtered water. Between real estate and a luxury-shopping boom, New York City is experiencing a mercantile bustle not seen since right before the 2008 bust, but, hey — who am I to judge?

Again: It’s hard to account for the precise condition of this swaying economy. Of course, as sales numbers from Black Friday are unsealed, journalists and traders will interpret them as moving earth. Don’t fall for it. Last I checked, profitability (not sales) is the real truth teller here, so don’t get caught up in any of the Black Friday noise.

For now, ours is a second-guess economy for the ages. As Thanksgiving approached, The New York Times — which once offered avuncular views of the economy in voice of God tones — instead threw up his hands in headline reading: “How Baseball Statistics Can Help Explain the Economy.”

On-base percentage as a clue to earnings per share? If you believe that, I have a car with a trick ignition switch to sell you.

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